Two non-related items

January 23, 2004 | View Comments (16) | Category: Our Thoughts

Summary: I need a community software package along the lines of MetaFilter.

I am looking for an open-source (or free) online community software package with the capabilities of a site like MetaFilter. where anyone can post a "news" item. I am not looking for forum software either. I have searched, but obviouly have been unsuccessful, so hopefully you have some good suggestions.

Also I have put together a comments feed that can be found here.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/118

Comments

#1

I don't know if this answers your question or not, but there's a listing of "clone" programs on the "etc" page of MetaFilter's site -

http://www.metafilter.com/etc.mefi

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#2

...and of course, the stupid question of the night would be, why not just open up the multiple poster priveledges in your installation of MT?

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#3

That looks to be exactly what I am looking for. Thanks Mark.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#4

Because this site will allow the ability of hundreds/thousands different people to post and I don't see MT doing too well in that situation.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#5

phpnuke.org or any of its forks or clones
hotscripts.com should have a good list.

or if you don't want any administration, a wiki would work.

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#6

Drupal is an open source CMS which allows for a lot of community interaction. There are several ways to set up a community news posting site.

One way would be to install the blog module. Then every user could have their own personal blog, and you can display a consolidated blog of all users posts on the main page.

There is also a Queue module which gives you more control. Any user can post items to the Queue, then members of the community vote on each item. When a item gets enough votes it is promoted to the front page.

Drupal ( http://www.drupal.org ) is very flexible, and should be able to do nearly anything you need.

CodeMonkeyX (http://www.codemonkeyx.net)

#7

I'm betting one with lots of time on the hands could alter MovableType to have registration for a blogging account. However, its non-dynamic, built pages would make such frequent, multiple-person posting unwieldy.

Chris Vincent (http://dris.webhop.org/)

#8

Paul,

I asked the same question on Ask Metafilter (http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/4495) and got some good responses.

Will Pate (http://www.willpate.org)

#9

http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/

http://www.drupal.org/ as mentioned, I've used & implemented this, a bit quirky.

http://www.phpslash.org/

http://plone.org/

You could use phpBB with a portal mod & strip it right back for the low-fi community feel.

not MT. And not phpnuke or any of the derivatives. Bleh.

More here: http://www.cmsinfo.org/
Try them here: http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Just remember most of these packages are bloatware. MeFi works because its simple.

luke

#10

ohh my bad, phpslash link should be:
http://phpslash.sourceforge.net/

luke

#11

heh. Cool. I didn't know metafilter ran on ColdFusion. Remove the ) from will's link and it'll work ok, without the CF error message.

I can't believe people in there were recommending pmachine... maybe it's improved 10000% in the .1 or maybe .2 releases since I looked at it, but the admin interface was a bloody nightmare, overcomplicated as hell. If you're going for that, http://wordpress.org(formerly b2) would work as well and be easier to use. All depends on what you need it for though.

And Luke, I know nuke has somewhat sloppy code (and the english occasionally sucks) but it's been around a good long time and has a huge community... so continued support is a given.

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#12

Sorry, here is the corrected link, sans ColdFusion error:

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/4495

Will Pate (http://www.willpate.org)

#13

A couple of suggestions..

FreeFilter at .. http://www.bigbold.com/freefilter

and phpilfer at http://holloway.co.nz/phpilfer/

Cheers

John

John (http://www.wow-factor.com)

#14

If the language that the CMS is written in is not an issue, I would suggest checking out Coranto.

It is written in PERL, has an active development community, and large amount of addons, and is pretty versatile in how it can be used. We have used it on several sites for allowing clients to post press releases and latest news items to their site, as well as editing some content.

It basically uses a text file to store data, and you just include that file in an .shtml file.

The newer version supports XHTML by just setting that option in the admin area.

http://coranto.gweilo.org

check out the add-ons especially. my favorite is one that allows you to create different categories for the items to be submitted to, which allows you to essentially control an entire site from one installation.

Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)

#15

I would recommend using:
Absolut Engine news publishing system
http://www.absolutengine.com

dusoft (http://www.ambience.sk)

#16

Thanks everyone for all the wonderful suggestions. Looks like I will have to do some research over the weekend. Also looks like no matter which package I choose there will be a lot of work to do to change the default templates seeing how all of the sites are nightmarish to say the least.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

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